Palimpsest
by That-Hoopy-Frood
Summary: "More than anything, I was surprised by how incredibly young they were..." Flame meets Crimson for the first time, and an old soul gets in over her head. Gift-fic for Antigone-Rex


_A fic for Antigone-Rex. 'Cause they're awesome_

* * *

Basque,

As I consider you a close friend, my hope is that you will forgive me if this report falls outside the bounds of the conventional. However, as my account will soon make clear, the circumstances surrounding the baseline testing of the two new state alchemists in your battalion warrant, I believe, special consideration.

Furthermore, being as you are the one responsible for leaving these two men under my supervision, you –– as the young people are prone to say –– owe me one.

When I think back, my first impression was how incredibly young they were.

According to you, I was to expect two unprecedented talents, researchers of the highest grade and alchemists of the finest caliber. Although my anticipation was tempered by a sobering cognizance of my duty –– I was to be their trainer, their teacher, not their friend –– I had to confess to a certain level of excitement when faced with the prospect of exchanging scholarship with a pair of my intellectual and academic peers. I noted at the time, however, that their names and titles had not been supplied to me in the weeks previously by means of the personnel manifests.

When the day came for their induction and formal orientation, I understood why. I did not find myself in the company of pedagogues. Rather, on that early, overcast morning, you left on the parade grounds of Central Headquarters two men at least twenty years my juniors. They looked, to me, so incredibly green. Too green, I thought, for the degree of discipline and code of behavior necessitated by Amestris's State Alchemy program.

You will of course remember what happened seven years ago, back before the Amestrian parliamentary congress was formally dissolved, when the government by wide margins passed an act that ratified a peacetime draft for all armed forces... including the State Alchemy program.

Amestris was, even then, an active participant in several full-blown armed conflicts and many more smaller border skirmishes. Because we were not merely a neutral bystander –– nor did Führer Bradley's style of governance suggest a shift towards the pacifistic anytime in the near future –– the draft ages were soon expanded; men 18 to 37 were now eligible. Ishvalans were passed over at first because of insular, jingoistic assumptions about their abilities and questions regarding the viability of a mixed-race military. This changed when the quota system was imposed, intended to limit the numbers of Ishvalans drafted to reflect their percentage of the overall population; initially, they were restricted to labor units, but this too ended as Amestris's involvement in various armed conflicts persisted.

I won't bore you with military history. The quota system did not hold my interest; of far more relevance to me and my station was the sudden likelihood of titled state alchemists who were not long out of their teens. I feared what their youth would mean for discipline, for order, for the sanctity of authority. Faced with my two young trainees that morning, I felt my fears manifested, and questioned as I never had before the government's reasoning in allowing these youths to dabble in a science I had long held sacred –– at the very least, far above the trifling interests and egoistic preconceptions of mere boys.

An alchemist yourself, you will understand that image alone reveals remarkably little. True understanding demands deconstruction and reconstruction, a mapping of the most fundamental schema of a person, from their atoms to their outward appearances. My method of alchemy –– reanimation, a restoration of consciousness –– renders such comprehension almost sacrosanct. Bereft of the opportunity to get the two young soldiers under a scalpel and a microscope –– a joke, I assure you –– my first impressions were contingent entirely upon their looks and the ways they carried themselves.

I remember striding across the parade grounds towards the pair, the four acres of thick spring grass wet under the early morning dew. The march dampened my stockings. Seeing my approach, the two young alchemists stood to attention –– the taller one, I noted, took his time in straightening himself, an air of arrogance and pomposity about him I didn't much care for.

"Major Roy Mustang, sir!" announced the shorter of the two, clicking his heels and snapping a crisp salute. "Flame Alchemist."

Major Mustang's was a very young, very soft face, but a defiant one, I thought. Big, bright eyes, an untidy thatch of black hair he'd have to learn to comb properly if he ever wanted to make a rank of any consequence. He wore white gloves, his arrays stitched in red upon their backs. Out of politeness and mindful of respecting his trade secrets, I did not inspect the equations for any protracted length of time.

After a moment, my eyes swung towards Flame's counterpart.

The tall, alarmingly thin man raised his bladed hand to his forehead, flashing a brief transmutation circle. His eyes, an unusual blue-purple, rose to meet mine, his brows, swept up in arcs, turned pointed and interrogative. Where Mustang had stared at my shoulder, the other alchemist returned my gaze with a look almost as surgically-precise as my own. Curiously, there was a warm luxuriance about him coupled with his sharpness –– I was immediately reminded of a cat.

"The Crimson Lotus Alchemist, ma'am," he said, his voice lowered, though the words were husky and harsh. "Solf J. Kimblee."

I recognized the name, though from scholarly circles rather than my military affiliations. Although I was a coroner before my service, I knew the young major's parents by reputation: academics of some prominence at a not too distant point in the past, though the family has seen its tragedies in more recent years. The patriarch vanished not long after the son graduated university at twelve years of age, the mother suffering a nervous breakdown shortly thereafter, and the elder sister turning expatriate and vanishing into the hinterlands of Creta. What had prompted the young prodigy to turn from advanced degrees in physics towards the military, I couldn't say, but according to our superiors, the pale, sickly-looking thing exhibited a technique and aptitude for martial alchemy unsurpassed even by seasoned veterans... myself included among that company.

I had my doubts. Not due to the imperative of pride or arrogance, mind you, although I would be the first to admit that I hold my brand of reanimation alchemy in high esteem. Rather, while the alchemists' youth gave me pause, their inexperience mitigated my expectations. There had been a time, immediately following the conference of my own state title, when I thought the most important thing in earning one's certification was innate talent. I have learned, by virtue of both combat and teaching experience, that a state alchemist must, to a certain degree, possess or teach herself, train herself, in infinite patience, in ruthless intolerance to her own inadequacies. Alchemy is a science concerned with truth, and tacit in alchemy's very practice is the throwing away of falsehood, regardless of how much one might love the delusion it engenders. More so than talent, the most important thing to becoming an alchemist is a willingness to seek out truth, even in the midst of war and destruction –– the intellectual self-command to wonder, to mull, and to muse, coupled with the discipline essential to one's station as an officer in the military.

If Roy Mustang and Solf Kimblee were able to conduct themselves as soldiers as well as alchemists, then I didn't think their talent made much difference, whether they had it or they didn't.

"At ease," I ordered them, filing my observations away for later consideration. Both Mustang and Kimblee relaxed, looping their hands behind their backs. I noted their postures: Mustang wide-stanced and solid, Kimblee limber and willowy.

"My name is Grace Lambert-Rosin––" I found the introductions as tiresome and monotonous then as I do now, thank you –– "I am the Kaolin Alchemist. You will address me as Major, Kaolin... or sir," I added after a moment, giving Major Kimblee a pointed look, which he acknowledged with a slight incline of his head. "If the pencil pushers in administration are worth their salt, then I understand that you have both earned your state certifications and accompanying titles. You now hold the rank of major and the status of commissioned officers in the Amestrian armed forces."

"Thank you, sir," came Mustang's dutiful reply. I didn't miss the slow arch of Kimblee's eyebrow, how his face worked in an odd way, like knitting coming undone.

A brown-noser and a smartarse. Your considerable talents, Colonel, do not extend to making my life in any way easy.

"I was not congratulating you, Major. Furthermore," I remember lowering my eyelids a fraction of a degree, until I was peering at them sidelong through my spectacles, "I ought to note at this juncture that while the status of state alchemist grants you both the rank of major, the title is conferred as an honor, without the usual requirements or functions. You will, therefore, be held accountable to officers of equal or, perhaps, lower rank. That includes me. Do I make myself clear?"

"As crystal, Kaolin," said Kimblee.

Mustang, meanwhile, and quite without my expecting it, had pursed his mouth in a tight little frown, seemingly unhappy with something. "With respect, sir," he asked, carefully, "does that mean our statuses as soldiers are purely honorary, without any real professional standing?"

Kimblee's prying expression finally manifested itself in a bark I hesitated to call a laugh. Mustang looked askance at him, evidently taking it as such.

"What's so funny, Major?" asked Roy, ostensibly polite; his attempt at forbearance didn't have me convinced, but I respected his efforts, regardless.

Kimblee, however, seemed pleased as punch to elaborate: "Is it not a touch early to be considering your future career aspirations, Flame Alchemist?"

Mustang said a curious thing, then: "I joined the military in order to better serve the people of this country. How can I be expected to do that if state alchemists hold rank in name alone?"

I looked between the two soldiers, gauging their reactions. Even with the benefit of hindsight, I cannot say for certain what I had expected to find in their expressions. But I was a mite surprised that Kimblee was regarding Mustang with an appearance of almost juvenile inquisitiveness; though he was the older of the two by several years, he looked over at Roy with what might have been an intense curiosity in his eyes. Or perhaps it was something else entirely. Something wicked… something dangerous, less like a child examining an insect under a magnifying glass, and more like the child using that same magnifying glass to turn the creature to ash.

"How quixotic of you."

I noted a sudden hardness to Roy's body, a tensing of his muscles and a lost expression on his face.

"I think, perhaps," Kimblee seemed almost to purr, which only added to his oddly feline qualities, "you've stumbled into the wrong line of work, Flame."

Mustang bristled, his pride affronted. I would have sorrowed over the fragility of the male ego, but my discipline –– and, I admit, my burning curiosity –– kept me from interrupting the exchange. It was a fascinating case study in two personalities at loggerheads.

"Living is a constant process of debunking our romantic notions of how our future will unfold," said Kimblee, idly inspecting a fingernail. "I've found that reality oftentimes fails to meet a person's glamorous expectations."

Mustang stood for a moment in brooding, angry silence. When he finally spoke, he straightened, assuming an odd attitude of dignity. "Alchemy may make me an idealist," he said, what had been calm and collected becoming as sharp as razor wire, "but the military makes me a realist."

"You are Bradley's dog," sneered Kimblee. His callous, lunatic chuckle turned into a snicker and seemed to go on and on and on, rattling in his throat. It is worth noting at this stage that I felt the small hairs standing up on the back of my neck.

"If you are as realistic as you say, you ought to at least act the part. Roll over for a bone. Play fetch. I'm sure you'd look very pretty in a collar, scratching your scruff with your hind leg..."

I was still trying, with minimal success, to determine whether the Crimson Alchemist was merely a fast-talking eccentric with a tendency towards the highly irritating... or something infinitely more dangerous. In any case, Kimblee's initial inquisitiveness had turned to provocation, and I had neither the time nor the patience for playground piss-taking.

"Enough!" I told him. Kimblee went quiet. Mustang, flushed in the face, followed suite. I turned to address the latter:

"Major, rank is a thing obtained in return for service. You have every reason and every right to command respect on account of your state certification, both the respect of your fellow alchemists and your fellow soldiers. But you cannot take that respect for granted. If you do, you will lose it. It is not yours by right; you must earn it."

"The examination––"

"Merited you a silly name and a pocket watch. It takes more to merit honor… honor without title, without witness."

The answer, though glib, seemed to satisfy them both. At least, it kept Kimblee from further antagonization and Mustang from voicing any more of his –– admittedly –– juvenile ideas. Satisfied my orientation was not liable to break out into fisticuffs for the time being, I proceeded with the administrative humdrum...

"You have demonstrated to an adequate standard an ability to understand, deconstruct, and reconstruct raw materials at your disposal, and have further distinguished yourselves by means of an alchemical praxis unique to your own research." I paused for a reaction and, getting only a small exhalation of breath from Mustang, and a curious inclination of one eyebrow from Kimblee, I went on: "Think of your certification as the defense of your dissertation, your thesis. Your commission will be your professional work, and by extension, your military service to your country. You are no longer scholars... you are soldiers. There is a transition that must be made.

"And that, gentlemen, is why I'm here."

I gestured to the parade grounds. The dew was white upon the grass, shining in those first few rays of weak, watery sun. There were green footprints making a path, strolling ahead of us towards the targets you'd had some hapless sergeant set a few hours before. The air was very clear and the long morning shadows distinct, casting the silhouettes of the straw dummies in long, thin regiments across the lawn. The first sounds of Central City nibbled at the edge of the stillness.

Major Kimblee smiled at me. An odious, calculated, self-satisfied little grin. "Major," he ventured, quietly, "is this a combat simulation?"

I don't know why he insisted on asking questions he very well knew the answer to already. I let our surroundings speak for me: twelve figures were assembled on the parade grounds, eleven painted red, a single one painted blue. The blue figure hung lashed to a pole across the field from us, a good hundred yards on the opposite side of the grass. Between us and it were the eleven other facsimiles, scattered at irregular intervals and clumped together in loose groupings.

Instead of indulging Kimblee's rhetoric, I intoned, with a proper degree of gravity: "Combat is not mindless killing," I told them both, "rather, it is controlled violence, for a purpose. You are here not to conduct research or invent new transmutation circles or balance equations, but to enforce your government's decisions by means of strength. It is not your business or mine to decide the purpose of the government's control: that belongs to the generals, to Führer-President Bradley. He decides the target, the generals take it from there and tell us where and when and how. We supply the violence... and other people supply the why."

I gestured, then, to the open field. Both Mustang and Kimblee looked intrigued.

"Consider this a baseline assessment," I said. "to gauge your combat ability under controlled parameters, in order that, at some future juncture, we may gauge the change in and efficacy of your performance should we decide to bend and break the parameters."

"A query, if I may, Kaolin."

"Proceed."

Major Kimblee's right arm was draped across his body, clasping the elbow opposite. His posture was not sufficiently strict –– a tell, if a small one. That he held himself so sloppily told me he did not take my evaluations at all seriously… that doubt existed, yet, sufficient in breadth and magnitude to dilute his deference to my authority.

He gestured with his free hand when he asked: "What parameters do you imagine exist in armed conflict?"

"In terms of objectives, the factors forming the conditions of any individual conflict can be traced back to your _orders_ , Crimson. Your mission. State alchemists do not and cannot act on their own self-motivation any more than enlisted men can."

Mustang's muttered a quiet: "And what of methodology, Major?"

I had been anticipating the question. "In terms of practice, Flame… so long as command's goal is achieved, and the objective met, the execution is entirely your prerogative."

"So when you speak of gradually removing parameters…"

"I want to first evaluate the effectiveness of your alchemy with my strict direction, and then without. I expect to see some improvement."

"And if there is none?"

I offered them both a small smile. "I anticipate your performances being far more impressive provided command does not suppress and restrain your alchemy. If the opposite proves true, I will be forced to conclude that you are either refusing to follow orders to the fullest degree or willfully checking the free play of your powers. Both possibilities, I might add, are treasonable offenses."

I heard Kimblee hum deep in his throat, a noise of thoughtful contemplation.

"Practicing alchemy is like gardening," I told him. "Planting, watering, and weeding are all very well, but one must prune if one desires growth."

"Are these parade grounds to be your furrows, then, Major Kaolin?" asked Kimblee. Despite the lack of respect or seriousness in the question, there was weight of consequence in Kimblee's eyes, a clinical, cold intelligence, like a chessmaster who knew his opponent's mistakes were all there waiting to be made, if only he had the wherewithal and ruthlessness to rout them out. All done, I suspect, with the intention of arousing an emotional response from me rather than to elicit any real information.

It seemed more effective, however, in ensnaring Mustang's consideration. The younger man looked both appalled and angered by Kimblee's stubborn defiance of my authority.

I did not rise to Crimson's taunts. In fact, a part of me was pleased: he had taken my advice to heart, regarding the nature of a state alchemist's standing in the military. To him, my rank was an empty thing.

Because I had yet to earn his respect.

Perhaps this is a trait unique to myself, Colonel, especially among our kin, but I admit that a great burden was lifted from my shoulders the day I realized that no one owes me anything. No one owes me moral conduct, respect, friendship. No one owes me love. It is a lonely life, but it is, in some ways, an honest life.

And so, I answered the Crimson Alchemist truthfully: "In a manner of speaking, yes." Many a sarcastic wit had been exhausted by several turns of my patient answers. Major Kimblee's would be no different.

Or so I thought.

Regardless of my retrospective appraisal of the exchange, at the time I was satisfied that I was not about to receive any further lip from Crimson. So, I turned to face the field and began the exercise.

"If you would indulge me by suspending your disbelief for the next few minutes, gentlemen… presented for your consideration are twelve figures in a heavily-trafficked portion of Central City. One of them," I gestured to the furthermost post, to the figure daubed in blue, "is an enemy combatant, a foreign operative hiding amongst the crowd. He is in possession of highly-classified and extremely sensitive state secrets which he intends to sell on the black market. You will note that between you and them are eleven civilians.

"Command has ordered you to dispose of the operative. Major Mustang," the Flame Alchemist stood to attention, "carry out your orders, if you would."

"Yes, sir."

"Major Kimblee, you and I would do well to take a step back."

"A marvelous suggestion, Kaolin."

Mustang stepped towards the center of the parade grounds, distancing himself ten or twenty paces from the first makeshift obstacle: the first civilian. I did well to notice how he rubbed his thumb and forefinger together –– not an altogether uncommon nervous spasm, however, the fact that the motion sparked like flint against stone hinted at some alchemical motivation.

Even bereft of any foreknowledge regarding the identities of my two pupils, I had read about Mustang's praxis following his certification exam, my interest piqued when I learned that he had been the youngest candidate to ever attempt the test. Major Mustang's alchemy of choice, as you well know, involves rapid reduction–oxidation, high-temperature exothermic reactions between a reductant, catalyzed by the friction of his gloves, and the oxidant, the oxygen in the air, the latter of which is adjusted for volume to control the conflagration. His Flame Alchemy equates to applied stoichiometry, or the calculation of relative quantities of reactants and products in a reaction. The level of control warranted by the interplay of so many variables suggested a level of maturity, of genius, even, that exceeded his youthful appearance.

Mustang raised his hand. There was a sudden, peculiar smell not unlike fuel, a greasy taste under my tongue and an oily, slick film on my fingertips. In a moment, I imagined gasoline spilling onto the grass, leaving trails of burning kerosene across the parade grounds. Concomitant with my expectations, the oxygen seemed to thicken and swell around us.

When the boy snapped his fingers, my former suspicions crystallized into certainties. With a speed almost alarming, he appeared to set entire field ablaze.

I took a step backward, buffeted by the blast of heat and the wind howling into the oxygen pockets. Flames engulfed the dummy at the far end of the field. Black cinders of smutted wood and putty-like fat began to glow. The civilians, however, were left unscathed. The fire snaked around the obstacles like a diverted river… diverted by Mustang himself and his control over the oxygen concentration in the air.

It was effective, if costly. When he at last turned away from his conflagration, his face was both flushed and pale, two circles of color under his eyes where the rest of him had blanched to the color of new milk.

As the fire burned through its fuel, Mustang's knees began to knock together. He was so drained of his physical and mental resources from the intense calculations and the degree of control necessitated by his transmutations, that he seemed almost soluble, as though he was in danger of evaporating into the cool morning air. Not made of blood and bone, but vapor and fog. But exhaustion was a familiar, dry-as-dirt emotion, Colonel, one I have grown accustomed to over my many years of service. Needless to say, it was not exhaustion I found in Roy Mustang's gaze. When he turned his eyes to me I saw in them a magnitude of loss and resignation strong enough to lacerate the heart, and in an instant I caught a glimpse of some deep inner turmoil veiled by the boy's quiet dignity. Like an inferno starved of oxygen, however, his emotions burned bright and burned fast, and his anguish soon vanished in the smoke.

Mustang opened his mouth to speak to me, but then he blinked, and he was teetering.

To my surprise, Major Kimblee rested a bracing hand on Major Mustang's arm, holding the boy upright. Perhaps far more surprisingly, the Flame Alchemist did not refuse the assistance.

"Acceptable," I told the Major. Then: "However, as you hardly seem able to hold yourself upright, perhaps you ought to reevaluate your mode of approach. Under combat conditions, how could your commanding officer possibly count on you to continue operations?"

Mustang grit his teeth. Only then, did he push Kimblee aside –– the latter seemed only momentarily affronted. "But I succeeded," Roy muttered, barely more than a whisper, by which point his face had turned pea-green, and I took a step aside to avoid his voiding the contents of his stomach.

"May I?" interjected the Crimson Alchemist, looking over Mustang with something akin to amusement, but to me was far too reminiscent of a pit viper regarding some hapless rodent clutched in its coils.

But as the exercise necessitated the participation of both soldiers, and as Mustang had not expended quite enough strength to burn the enemy dummy entirely to ash, I waved my acknowledgement. "The field is yours, Major."

"Thank you."

No doubt, Colonel, you have already anticipated the direction this report is taking, for it seems improbable that what happened precisely three days ago will soon escape your memory.

After all, it was your office that nearly got flattened.

Kimblee strode past Mustang, past the closest dummy civilian, until he stood at the center of the parade grounds.

He clapped his hands together, the contact reverberating like a shot, and brought his palms to the grass.

Radiant sheens of red lightning seeped from his hands like blood from a bullet wound. As the arcs of light touched above the grass, the air seemed to hiss and groan. I suddenly feared that the very oxygen would be boiled completely away. The explosions that followed reminded me of a bomb I'd once seen dropped on a village near the Aerugonian border with Amestris. The hamlet had been wiped clean from the world, buried under the remnants of the very cliffs and buttes that had once surrounded it. For four days, there had been no sun as the aftershocks hurled wave after wave across the land: first rock and debris, then sulfurous windstorms, then fire, then acid thunderclouds. A sky so thick and gritty that no bird could fly.

Kimblee's alchemy reminded me very much of that bomb... only stronger, brighter, and devastatingly more efficient.

The explosions seemed to propagate, the products themselves promoting the violent chain reaction. Dazzling claws of lightning streaked down the length of the field, splitting the earth from the perimeter wall to the eastern wing of Headquarters. The hedge and the distant trees seemed to leap forward in the brilliance of the crimson flash.

And the _sound_ , Colonel.

A high, tearing noise, as though some huge thing were being ripped to pieces below the skin of the earth, the rumble deepening and turning to enormous blows of dissolution as the ground simply collapsed around Major Kimblee, ripping the combatant dummy to pieces along with the civilians. Debris from the explosions radiated out across the parade grounds, flattening the grass and causing Major Mustang and myself to throw a protective arm over our eyes. Kimblee's alchemy was both terrible and awe-inspiring, like the release of a vast, ceaseless storm. The shockwaves hit me at the same time they hit everything else around us, the trees and the bushes, the eastern facade of Central Headquarters, and every atom in my body seemed affected by it. The windows nearest to us threatened to shatter, and a part of me wanted very much to seek shelter, should the explosions propagate beyond the borders of the flat, open space.

But I didn't. I couldn't.

I cannot explain it, even now, but I found myself unable to move. We were trapped there, Mustang and I, on the edge of utter ruin. Bound by circumstances and by bonds too tight ever to break. Here, terribly, we would remain for as long as Kimblee remained, so long as his alchemy held us captive.

I looked deeply into the explosions, and the timeless, eternal dance of color and sound I saw and heard there was so beautiful, so terrible, Colonel, I wanted to weep.

After a moment, the concussive booms reduced to a more sedate and sane level, and I stole a glance across at Kimblee. He stood amid the swirling torrent of smoke in a circle of ethereal red light. He was smirking with an undisguised glee at just how clever a little boy he was.

There was something beyond amoral about the man in that moment, sir. Beyond any concept of science as sanity. A desperate, tragic, overwhelmingly labyrinthine evil. He kept his gaze to mine as the smoke cleared to reveal the crater in the earth, the utter devastation where before there had been the green field, leaving only Mustang, slack-jawed, me, silent, and him, sunk in serene meditation as the moments fell away, tilting back and forth on his heels as though expecting me to snatch him up and toss him away. Not as one does a blunted instrument… but one far too powerful for me to wield alone.

The fury at the thought tightened in my chest, stiffened every muscle in my body. I was struck with the sudden urge to kill Solf J. Kimblee –– I was convinced that he had to die in order to learn his own abhorrence. And if he didn't know he deserved to die, then what was the point of the exercise? What was the point of so much destruction?

But the look he gave me was one of smug pity, a thinly-veiled disdain for a woman who had heretofore forgiven those who had sinned in the name of Amestris's security… he held me in contempt for the simple fact that I would, one day, forgive even him. For no other reason than because my duty would demand I do so.

No.

Not forgive, Colonel. Perhaps that is not the right word.

Endure. Suffer patiently.

Kimblee saw it all as an experiment, to determine whether my fear was for him… or for myself. With each surge of fire in the wind, he delivered a series of hammer blows to my self-regard, and in the moments between each breath, I saw what his eyes said: that it wasn't him being tested at all.

It was me.

And though I understood not what he was testing, I knew my failure as surely as I knew my own name.

Conviction, Colonel. A kind of faith is as close as I can manage. To hold true to one's convictions, regardless of their repulsiveness, is a source of relief to the soul of the idealist, creating a sense of fortitude that is incomprehensible to those who do not know what conviction is all about. And when the radius of my thoughts touched upon the longitude of my lack of faith –– just as the crater of Kimblee's fashioning brushed the foundations of Central Headquarters –– it elicited pain. True, almost physical pain, a burn like indigestion.

Perhaps my seeking to ameliorate existential anguish in that moment incited me to ponder more spiritual matters, and in doing so I was spurred to contemplate the perimeter of unknown frontiers. The alchemist's ability to understand the compass of life and death allows her to view the circumference of the world as consisting of an infinite present in relation to her own life, each moment unique onto itself. But as often as I had viewed the range of the singularity of my life, I had never once rationalized my march towards what came after, towards the reckoning for sins both perpetrated and endured. Consequently, I came to the conclusion that I lacked a system of belief –– not in any religious sense, mind you, but in terms of a faith, a complete trust or confidence in a singular vision of the world. I lacked ideals.

I lacked conviction… and Kimblee hated me for it.

In the wake of my understanding, in the aftermath of Kimblee's devastating explosions, the utter unbroken silence was more appalling than any ominous noise, than the loudest yells of anguish, than the most piercing screams.

"A word of advice, Flame," said Kimblee, though I suspected he was not talking to Mustang, alone: "if you are truly convinced that there is some solution to all human suffering, that you can create an ideal society which men can reach if only they do what is necessary to attain it, then you and your followers must believe that no price can be too high to pay in order to open the gates of such a paradise."

There should be a word for it. That phantom limb, reaching out from one's chest, towards things you'll never see.

The last shred of dawn caught Solf J. Kimblee's dark hair as he turned and strode across the shattered remains of the parade grounds, like the start of one thing and the conclusion of another. The sunrise itself, Colonel.

He was the beginning of our end.

This concludes my report. I hope to speak with you in person posthaste.

\- Grace


End file.
